Western Society: Over and Out

[drummindiver]

42 minutes ago, dialamah said:

Sarcasm, yes.  Equally about climate change, which is another much-argued topic on here.

Right,   but you can't bring it up in the OP then claim it irrelevant. 

 

[Hal 9000]

Not only do the middle east countries have the highest population growth, but they're having babies at 13 or 14 years old, whereas western women are starting families at 27-30 years old, which means a generation in the M.E world is about 15 years and in the west a generation is about 25 years.  

The western world is completely incapable of supporting the influx of middle easterners - even if they wanted to.  The rich will probably last longer than the rest of us, but surely the middle class westerners will all be poor soon.  Check out France.  

[Guest]

38 minutes ago, dialamah said:

Muslims are encouraged to have babies, as far as I know.   But it really is the less educated and poorer who tend to have more babies.   

 

31 minutes ago, Hal 9000 said:

Why is that?  Why are all these poverty stricken societies encouraged to have more babies when we know, thanks to Kimmey, that we have a population problem.  Then, we go further and suggest that the problem is wealth distribution - it makes no sense! 

 

With Catholics it's the whole, sex is for procreation not for pleasure, thing, so contraception is a bit of a no-no.  Most civilised Catholics give such views short shrift.

With Islam, is contraception mentioned at all, or is it just a general exhortation to procreate?

[OftenWrong]

Nonsense. You end of the world harbingers always give me a good laugh.

These problems are nothing a good couple of wars won't solve.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, OftenWrong said:

Nonsense. You end of the world harbingers always give me a good laugh.

These problems are nothing a good couple of wars won't solve.

It depends what you mean by end of the world.  If you mean the planet explodes and disappears from the Solar System, then no, that's probably not going to happen.  If you mean the Human Race pretty much wiped out and the planet turned into a largely unliveable desert then a couple of wars would actually do a lot to bring that about, and not really solve anything.  The world will keep orbiting the sun though.

[eyeball]

5 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

it is not a zero sum game.  The overall economy will continue to improve and the factory worker is collateral damage.  He/she has to adapt or die.  That's the essence of our economy - you sell your skills on the market.  For every factory job lost, another one is added in another part of the country.

I don't see differing tribes warring more than in the past, I see them trading more.

It might continue a little longer due to the momentum and inertia of our expansion the last hundred years and we can't rule out a technological breakthrough and innovating our way through the narrowing of opportunities known as The Bottleneck (I'm capitalizing this because I believe it will be what future ecologists and economists call the event) but I doubt it. 

It may not be a zero sum game if we attain Technological Singularity-hood for example but it also might be.  I think we know enough by now to confidently say that we've squandered our social capital so badly that we've effectively chosen the mean path through The Bottleneck.  We could have taken the path that was laid out for us in Kindergarten but we didn't. It is what it is.

[eyeball]

5 hours ago, Derek 2.0 said:

The waterhole is only so big.

Yeah but look how fat and juicy the biggest animals around it look.

Edited January 8, 2017 by eyeball

[eyeball]

5 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

3) No - the waterhole is the economy and it gets bigger.

The waterhole is the world's natural capital and it is getting smaller. 

[bush_cheney2004]

2 minutes ago, eyeball said:

The waterhole is the world's natural capital and it is getting smaller. 

 

No...it is not getting smaller.   It is being transformed into something else, and is often reclaimed.   Conservation of mass laws apply.

[OftenWrong]

9 minutes ago, bcsapper said:

It depends what you mean by end of the world.  If you mean the planet explodes and disappears from the Solar System, then no, that's probably not going to happen.  If you mean the Human Race pretty much wiped out and the planet turned into a largely unliveable desert then a couple of wars would actually do a lot to bring that about, and not really solve anything.  The world will keep orbiting the sun though.

Poppycock. We've had a few wars lately, and all is still well. What's the problem?
Superpowers have learned the value of fighting their wars by proxy.

[eyeball]

3 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

1) It's not finite.  Economic progress continues and I don't know how it's limited unless you're talking about the resources of the earth, which is a valid point but not what we're discussing.

How can you possibly discuss the economy in the absence of the planet? I suppose if you have a fresh planet or two up your sleeve...and that said, I've heard Christians I know who tell me not to worry because God indeed does have a new world waiting for us.

On top of all the 8 balls we've lined up behind we also have a world populated with an over-abundance of delusional thinking behind people's motives and actions.

[Hal 9000]

5 minutes ago, eyeball said:

How can you possibly discuss the economy in the absence of the planet? I suppose if you have a fresh planet or two up your sleeve...and that said, I've heard Christians I know who tell me not to worry because God indeed does have a new world waiting for us.

On top of all the 8 balls we've lined up behind we also have a world populated with an over-abundance of delusional thinking behind people's motives and actions.

How intriguing, can you expand on that?

[eyeball]

For you? I doubt it.

[Hal 9000]

4 minutes ago, eyeball said:

For you? I doubt it.

Yea, that's what i figured!  

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, OftenWrong said:

Poppycock. We've had a few wars lately, and all is still well. What's the problem?
Superpowers have learned the value of fighting their wars by proxy.

The wars you are talking about don't solve anything.

[eyeball]

1 minute ago, Hal 9000 said:

Yea, that's what i figured!  

You honestly need me to expand on such an uncomplicated idea?  How freaking old aren't you anyway?

[bush_cheney2004]

"War is a continuation of politics by other means." - Carl von Clausewitz

[OftenWrong]

2 hours ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

"War is a continuation of politics by other means." - Carl von Clausewitz

Yes. One could say wars are even... civilized.

Edited January 8, 2017 by OftenWrong

[Hal 9000]

5 minutes ago, eyeball said:

You honestly need me to expand on such an uncomplicated idea?  How freaking old aren't you anyway?

"delusional thinking", "motives and actions".  It sounded like you were really on the way to making a point, but it seems that it's just more empty rhetoric - too bad.

[eyeball]

The point was in the sentence above the one you quoted in bold. Too bad you went scooting past it.  You do that an awful lot I've noticed.

[Hal 9000]

3 minutes ago, eyeball said:

The point was in the sentence above the one you quoted in bold. Too bad you went scooting past it.  You do that an awful lot I've noticed.

The above statement you made was just another "throw away" slag - very weak. 

 

[blueblood]

43 minutes ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

No...it is not getting smaller.   It is being transformed into something else, and is often reclaimed.   Conservation of mass laws apply.

I agree, with the rise in the Asian economies and their living standards, there is going to be a readjustment to how the Asian countries market their products to each other instead of overseas.  The USA workers will eventually go back to servicing the USA market and Canada will go back to providing the raw materials to do so.  

I believe right now is an adjustment phase as the USA has been running on credit for the past 40 yrs buying Asian products and people want their jobs back, so eventually the Americans will make goods for themselves again and everyone will in the long run be richer.  It's a long and painful process to get there though. As per the election of trump, people got tired of waiting.

[bush_cheney2004]

2 minutes ago, blueblood said:

I agree, with the rise in the Asian economies and their living standards, there is going to be a readjustment to how the Asian countries market their products to each other instead of overseas.  The USA workers will eventually go back to servicing the USA market and Canada will go back to providing the raw materials to do so. 

 

Agreed.....America's trash is China's treasure:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-08-29/to-a-chinese-scrap-metal-hunter-americas-trash-is-treasure

[eyeball]

9 minutes ago, Hal 9000 said:

The above statement you made was just another "throw away" slag - very weak. 

 

This has been discussed at length ad nauseam around here and people have been slagged just as often as not for doing so.  Some of that squandered social capital I was talking about.

You really don't have a clue what I mean now do you?

 

[H10]

11 hours ago, Hal 9000 said:

Why is that?  Why are all these poverty stricken societies encouraged to have more babies when we know, thanks to Kimmey, that we have a population problem.  Then, we go further and suggest that the problem is wealth distribution - it makes no sense! 

Canada was once a poverty stricken society, why did people have so much kids back then?  Poor country = agricultural country.  Agra country = agra people, agra people =people with no social security or old age pension or support system.  Thus your only support will be your children.  Telling people who rely on their children to work their farm, to provide retirement security for them, is not paying attention to realities.

 

11 hours ago, Hal 9000 said:

Not only do the middle east countries have the highest population growth, but they're having babies at 13 or 14 years old, whereas western women are starting families at 27-30 years old, which means a generation in the M.E world is about 15 years and in the west a generation is about 25 years.  

The western world is completely incapable of supporting the influx of middle easterners - even if they wanted to.  The rich will probably last longer than the rest of us, but surely the middle class westerners will all be poor soon.  Check out France.  

ME doesn't have that big of a population though, most the immigrants to Europe are turks anyways not arabs.